Schleck my biggest rival, says Contador

Cadel Evans continues to receive little respect from his Tour de France rivals despite the Australian reaching the event's first rest day wearing the leader's yellow jersey.

Three days after Luxembourg's Andy Schleck said "not to discredit him, but I don't see Evans sticking with the leaders", two-time champion Alberto Contador has labelled Schleck his biggest rival for overall honours.

Contador sits third overall at 1min 01sec behind Evans, who has a 20sec lead on Schleck following the Luxemburger's victory on stage eight in the Alps.

Schleck's attack in the final kilometre of the 14km climb to Avoriaz on Sunday left Contador's group, which also contained Evans and several other contenders, struggling to counter.

They eventually finished 10secs behind Schleck and after the first real mountain stage of the race Contador believes climbing faster than the Saxo Bank leader will be his biggest challenge this year.

"Last year he (Schleck) gave me a few problems and this year he will be my biggest rival," said the Spaniard, who won the race in 2007 and 2009.

"When the attacks started (on the last climb) it wasn't easy for me to counter, then Schleck attacked. I tried to follow him but when I saw they'd taken a small lead I decided to sit up.

"In the end we lost a few seconds but overall it was a good result."

Schleck's response was to express his surprise that Contador hadn't stayed with him in stage eight, suggesting he believes he has an edge over the Spaniard.

"Before I have not seen him in difficulty yet and I think yesterday he was," Schleck said.

"I was surprised he couldn't follow, to be honest, because the day before I had a really strong impression of him.

"The fact that he couldn't follow me means maybe the next days, hopefully, can be the same."

Contador's Astana team set most of the attacking pace on the race's last two climbs on Sunday, a tactic employed to drop rivals and which proved fatal for some.

Seven-time champion Lance Armstrong, who suffered a hip injury in one of his several crashes on the stage, could not close the gap and was left almost 12 minutes adrift, his Tour campaign now virtually over.

Schleck, like Evans and many other favourites, was left with no teammates to help him as Contador's Astana team kept numbers up front until the final few kilometres of the stage.

The Spaniard said Astana had done great work in trying to put time into their rivals and that as of Tuesday's final day in the Alps they will look for a repeat.

"We took responsibility for the race because we saw that Lance (Armstrong) was behind and that all the rest (of the field) were struggling.

"It seems he (Armstrong) lost a lot of time although there's still a lot of stages for him to attack.

"After the rest day, I hope we can be just as effective."

Armstrong, on his final Tour campaign, is now 39th overall at 13:26 behind Evans.